Blower motor & cage review.

[Gary]

My original heater-a/c fan was not blowing much air through the system. Just got the new motor and cage from specialtauto. Now it works great. Very satisfied with the results. If you haven't done this yet you will be impressed. I took my car out for a spin and had the a/c on and about froze my face off. Granted your system will work best if the gaskets in the heater control box are newer. The original ones are most likely have turned to goo after 30 some odd years.

I was skeptical at first but this product really worked for me.

Gary

[Greasy DeLorean Mechanic]

If you want to go the Autozone route, blower motor and cage are the same as 1981 Chevette (Opel). PM105 for the motor and 35601Z for the cage. Lifetime warranty on both (squirrel cage is aluminum so I'd be surprised if it ever broke).

Note that the blower motor spins clockwise versus DeLorean's counter-clockwise -- if you want to use it with the factory squirrel cage you need to wire it up backwards to spin backwards. Replacement cages are clockwise.

Bill Robertson
#5939

[Josh]

I bought the feiro unit at the parts store. It didnt have a cage so I put the delorean one on. Do I have to reverse it as well? It doesn't seem to blow that great, but its not too bad either.

[NightFlyer]

My original heater-a/c fan was not blowing much air through the system. Just got the new motor and cage from specialtauto. Now it works great. Very satisfied with the results. If you haven't done this yet you will be impressed. I took my car out for a spin and had the a/c on and about froze my face off. Granted your system will work best if the gaskets in the heater control box are newer. The original ones are most likely have turned to goo after 30 some odd years.

I was skeptical at first but this product really worked for me.

Gary

Thanks for the review Gary - these are very helpful to the community at large

FYI - Another option is to try rebuilding the OEM unit, as after all, it's just an electric motor with nothing too fancy about it. I know that Andrew has successfully resurrected at least a couple of these units by just being willing to invest a little time and effort

[Greasy DeLorean Mechanic]

I bought the feiro unit at the parts store. It didnt have a cage so I put the delorean one on. Do I have to reverse it as well? It doesn't seem to blow that great, but its not too bad either.

Pull the motor off and run it loose on the garage floor. If it spins clockwise (it may well -- clockwise is pretty much standard) you either need to replace the squirrel cage with a clockwise one or swap positive and negative leads to make the motor spin counterclockwise. Note that Lotus used the negative terminal as a ground wire junction point -- you may need to combine those leads into a single connector or make a pigtail that moves the junction off the motor. Reversing the leads of course means the housing will be positive, but it's mounted into plastic so that doesn't matter. Some pontificators will gnash their teeth, but the Brits themselves once went through a phase where the entire car was reversed (positive grounded).

Biggest advantages of parts house motors are low cost, lifetime warranty, and easy replacement if ever necessary.

Bill Robertson
#5939

[Gary]

All I know is that before the vents would blow a gentle breeze. Now there is gale force winds coming out of the vents. I use to have the fan speed on 4 just to get any amount of air out. Fan speed 1&2 were almost non existent. But I digress.....

Its been a pretty hot summer in the Northwest this year and so I just had to charge up my A/C unit. It was the last system in my car that I had never worked on. Luckily there was a little pressure in the system. All I had to do was add a couple of cans of r-12. Then I jumped in the car and turned on the ac and put the fan on max. The air was cold but not blowing very hard. It would eventually cool the inside down. But after a few weeks of this hot weather it was just not enough. Maybe I didn't put enough r-12 in the system I thought. I really didn't want to use up my last can of r-12. So I ordered the fan from specialtauto. My package arrived pretty quickly and the fan unit was a simple drop out and drop in exchange. I placed the units side by side and I could not see any significant difference from the old unit and the new one. I was skeptical at best. I thought; well there goes some more money down the Delorean pit. I swear I have probably spent $1000 in unneeded parts because I have forgotten I had already ordered parts, or I broke a perfectly good part by mistake, or I ruined a perfectly good part because I thought I could somehow fix something that turns out didn't need fixing in the first place!

Well there I was putting in a new part that really, I thought was going to be a dud. I installed it and started up the car and nothing! No fan. I was going to call Hearvy at specialtauto. He has enough of my money already %#@&!!!!. I stuck my head under the dash and looked at the connections. Turns out the ground contact point needed attention. I sanded off some of the paint under the contact point and it worked.

What came out of the vents was nice cold air. Lots of it. Now #2 on my fan is what #4 use to be. I don't even use #4 much because my car gets chilly inside. I don't know if it's the new cage or the fan because I replaced both. What I'll do is an experiment. I'll take out the new system and swap out the cages and fan motors to find out what part did the trick and report back.

Gary

[NightFlyer]

All I know is that before the vents would blow a gentle breeze. Now there is gale force winds coming out of the vents. I use to have the fan speed on 4 just to get any amount of air out. Fan speed 1&2 were almost non existent. But I digress.....

That's great

Like I said, these reviews really do help the community in general, especially in regards to a vendor, as sometimes their parts aren't all that great - Hervey hot water / heater control valve, DMCH repro dashes, etc. Good to know that Hervey offers a good blower motor/cage replacement

[Greasy DeLorean Mechanic]

Picture on John's website shows a counter clockwise squirrel cage.

I'm sure there is a counter clockwise xRef motor -- just isn't the GM part some of us have been buying.

John does try to keep his xRef'ed parts as plug & play as possible, so I'm sure he found one. Won't disclose the part number of course, but that's his right (John has hundreds if not thousands of hours invested in xRef research -- that's the heart of his business).

Bill Robertson
#5939

[Gary]

Blower motor & cage experiment

I recently bought a new blower motor and cage from specitatauto and was happy with my purchase. I wanted to know what part of that product worked.

Well I swapped back out the new blower motor cage with the original one. New motor & old cage = lots of air.
I swapped that out with the old motor and new cage. Old motor & new cage = little air.

QED its the motor. The original cage is fine you need a new motor if you want more air. I got mine from specialtauto. If you get something else it needs to spin CCW.

Gary